Worth redirecting old blog posts into pages?

[dchristensen3]

I'm working on a site that has some blog posts from 2011 - 2013 ranking on the first page for relevant terms.

I'm going through and updating some of the content, internal links, etc., and wanted to know if it's worth redirecting some of these blog posts into new pages (in WordPress).

Right now, the blog post URLs are long - exampleURL.com/2011/3/9/blog-post-title/ and the dates show up in the SERPs.

I'd like to have the date removed so that the content doesn't look outdated, and I'd also like to have cleaner URLs.

In your opinion, is it worth creating new pages and redirecting the old blog posts, or is the benefit of doing this not worth the effort?

Thanks!

[Ryan-Bradley]

If you're in WordPress, changing your permalink structure will automatically transfer the pages for you with the new URLs. Then all you would need to do is add the 301 redirects for the old URLs to the new ones. So technically you would not have to create new pages, you would just need a list of the old URLs to input into your htaccess file for the redirects. Hopefully that helps to see if it's worth it for you.

[Chris.Menke]

I think doing so can help click through rates`from search results and redirecting those old urls to new ones will not likely be detrimental to your existing rankings.  Do users a favor though and date your posts if the content has a chance of becoming outdated.

[dchristensen3]

Thanks Ryan and Chris, I appreciate the feedback!